Free Wild Ginger by Anchee Min Page A

grounds of the cigarette factory, which seemed to be closed for the day. The doorman let the group in after he was thrown a pack of cigarettes.
    "They are hitting the factory's storage area." Wild Ginger waved at me. Together we began circling the building. Finally we arrived at the back of the factory where tobacco was heaped high.
    "How do you know?" I was watching Accountant Choo and his group disappear behind a wall.
    "I have been following them but I have never gotten inside the storage area. I want to see what they are doing. Would you wait here?"
    Before I could say anything Wild Ginger was gone. She had climbed the fence and leapt to the other side.

    I was nervous. My stomach gnawed at me with fear. The sky was now very dark and Wild Ginger was nowhere to be seen. There was no light. The area looked so desolate that it seemed the perfect place for a crime. Suddenly Wild Ginger reappeared. She ran toward me but didn't cross the fence.
    "Let's go," I urged.
    "Maple, I want you to notify the police immediately."
    "What?"
    "They are distributing the money that they have stolen!"
    "Are you sure, Wild Ginger?"
    "Sure! Go now!"
    "What about you?"
    "I need to keep an eye on them."
    "But—"
    "Hurry!" She turned and ran back into the darkness.
    I tried to envision what she would do. If they caught her they could murder her right here, easy, I thought.

    I left quickly. For a moment I was disoriented, too nervous to recognize directions. Finally I managed to get back to my own neighborhood. I zipped through lanes and passed my own door. The light in my house was already off. My mother always shut the light off early in order to save electricity. I told myself to keep going until I arrived at the door of the neighborhood police guard. I knocked.
    The guard opened the door. He was eating his dinner. His motorcycle was parked in the center of the room. Hearing my report he immediately phoned his headquarters. "The patrol is on the way." He wiped his oily mouth and put on his jacket. Starting his motorcycle he said, "Get on the back with me, kid."

    By the time the police and the patrol arrived Wild Ginger's face was scratched and her right arm hung loose in front of her chest. Trying to stop Choo and his group from escaping she was almost strangled to death. The police chief arrested Choo and his group on the spot.
    Wild Ginger was sent to the local hospital. Evergreen and I followed her into the large building. In an operating room, we sat by her side while doctors tended to her. They set her arm and wrapped it in a cast. They gave her blood transfusions and stitched up her cuts. I dampened
her lips with a wet towel. She was in enormous pain. Evergreen offered his hand. She grabbed it and breathed deeply. I watched the sweat on her forehead turn into crystal beads. Evergreen kept talking to her, trying to distract her from the pain. It surprised me to see the usually quiet Evergreen chatting away like a young wide-eyed boy. He told Wild Ginger stories of his childhood, of his fathers adventures as a sailor, his achievements and accidents, and later his strokes and nerve disorders. He told her how he and his late mother helped the old man when he was paralyzed. And finally about his own early dream of becoming a captain. He got excited when mentioning a toy ship he made when he was ten.
    "It's giant." He spread out his arms to show its length. "It's got a hundred and twenty-three compartments. It took twenty pounds of wood and six hundred empty matchboxes. I had collected matchboxes since I was seven. The ship took me two years to complete. I named it
Victory:
"
    Wild Ginger was quiet. She looked, no, stared at Evergreen, as if it weren't her body the doctor's needles were going through.
    "I used to make rainbow soap papers as a child," she told Evergreen after she was sent to the recovery room. "I was fascinated with the process. I went door to door to collect soap scraps. I scrubbed the leftover soap from soap boxes. After I